ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2016

I understand Tuomas' objections to the casual sexism of "Black Beatles," but the sexism is diluted through these snotty brats' boasts about being on top and as big as Beatle Paul. They've never seemed particularly interested in women -- they prefer their own company and their bad falsettos and wack rhymes.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

This makes them sound like Beavis & Butthead.

well aren't they

I think it makes as much sense as any other take I've seen. I can't stand to listen to them long enough to find out for myself.

It felt like there was an explicit critique in Sremmurd's early songs of traditional machismo which went a long way towards mitigating their own sexist tendencies (though I'm willing to own that that's kinda fucked on my part)

Black Beavis & Butthead feels pretty otm to me

90s nostalgia again

No ballot in there for me this year.

The interface kept failing, so I sent my votes in a Word file that must've gotten lost along the way.

Ah well.

Whoops wrong thread

Another song I was surprised to find out no one nominated was Maxwell's "Gods." That's been my favorite bSn track since it came out, but I guess I'm fringe.

'sremm black beavis & butthead' holds about as much water as 'alfred soto sophisticated cognoscente'

dude, you can float a loan to Mexico on my steez

the sexism is diluted through these snotty brats' boasts about being on top and as big as Beatle Paul. They've never seemed particularly interested in women -- they prefer their own company and their bad falsettos and wack rhymes.

This is actually a pretty common feature that's typically identified in hegemonic masculinity (not saying Rae Sremmurd can be totally hegemonic though, 'cos that also requires being white). Homosociality, being with (masculine) peers, is the preferred kind of social interaction, but even then tales of hetero conquests and dominance need to be constantly repeated because they're, A) sort of social currency, evidence that you're at the top of the pack, and, B) proof that you're not gay even though you associate mostly with other men ('cos hegemonic masculinity is fragile, despite its proponents’ claims it's not inborn or “natural”, so it needs to be constantly reinforced).

http://i.imgur.com/wUz4xhi.gif

Tuomas mad for whatever reason

"Into You" and its hugely camp synths, "Cranes In The Sky", the ultimate salve, and then Mitski. I don't care if that song sounds like "Teenage Dirtbag"; if anything I'd see that as a positive. I read "YBAG" as a triumphant song about self-actualisation and yeah ymmv but for a Japanese-American woman in these times I think that's an important artefact.

"All Night" was my #1. I'm sorry lex sees it as flaccid st8 boy bait. It exudes a warmth and beauty that again, like "Cranes In The Sky", acted like balm.

― monotony, Thursday, 26 January 2017 22:24 Bookmark

i'm sure u mean well but no one has to punch themselves in the face this many times in a row

I won't stop you though.

how mindful, how active, would you all say the inclusion of solange on these lists is. i'm not asking that to make a point about the album's quality like for blond. but really i don't have any confidence in the dialogue being there

― r|t|c, Thursday, 8 December 2016 22:23 Bookmark

fyi is the 'sex with me' write up really any less reductively banal than a paen to solange as supposed tranquilising oatmeal balm cocoon

― r|t|c, Wednesday, 14 December 2016 20:03 Bookmark

this shit is so fucked up and i claim my £5

v hopeless depressing song imo

― r|t|c, Thursday, January 26, 2017 4:50 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, yeah

can we just take a moment to celebrate Drake and "One Dance" at NUMBER 247 lolololololololol

The mathematician and philosopher Alex Bellos suggested in 2014 that a candidate for the lowest uninteresting number would be 247 because it was, at the time, "the lowest number not to have its own page on English Wikipedia".[4]

the best was the year of drake's breakout album (2011?) when we just collectively failed to even nominate it

I couldn't even clearly make out the YBAG lyrics when I first got into it but:

i wasnt trolling, i feel like the catharsis in the mitski song & underlining video comes from a place of exceptionally juvenile and self-defeating spite

ofc no one should mutilate their psyches to fit in anywhere and with anyone but the song gives you no sense of what the terms of structural submission/domination are or of any desire to examine them and find a path beyond. there is vague culture clash and the strange glory of striding away from it. v hopeless depressing song imo

...
"i incoherently hated myself but now i incoherently hate u instead, finito" is some bleak shit to me, sorry

Well, "hopeless and depressing" isn't exactly the same thing as "promoting cultural apartheid", which was what I described as trolling. But afaict the resolution isn't really "I hate you" as much as "I'm beginning to appreciate my own background instead of judging myself by your standard".

Mitski: The absolute ordinariness of the music combined with the 'I'm way too different to be here' sentiment in the lyrics is so paradoxically all-american it hurts...

― Frederik B, Thursday, 26 January 2017 17:09 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I
I'm so unique
IV
So very different
iii
Oh how can I function here
V
When I'm so special and differeeeent...

― Frederik B, Thursday, 26 January 2017 17:11 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Frederik, would you read it this way if she belonged to a different minority group? "Your mother wouldn't approve of how my mother raised me/But I do, I think I do" says almost the opposite of what you're suggesting it does: she IS different but she's beginning to recognize that she's NOT unique and alone, that there's a tradition behind why she's different, she's becoming OK with it, and she DOES belong even if she's not the best American girl in someone else's eyes.

despite j0rd's simple affection for 'one dance' hitting the "ann coulter is pretty" bell yet again, i must confess i myself am currently struggling to deny that 'hush up the silence' is a nice wave

I
I'm so unique
IV
So very different
iii
Oh how can I function here
V
When I'm so special and differeeeent..

Four Ways of Looking at a Blackguard

Missed this rollout, bah. The only real discovery for me was the de Biasio track, though it was good to get a chance to hear Solange, as I'd not spent any time with that record last year. I voted for 'Formation'.

Also lol @ ILM handwaving away sexist lyrics and then coming down hard on a woman for talking about how she feels marginalised.

afaict the resolution isn't really "I hate you" as much as "I'm beginning to appreciate my own background instead of judging myself by your standard".

― My Body's Made of Crushed Little Evening Stars (Sund4r), Thursday, 26 January 2017 23:32 Bookmark

she dead-ends the relationship and makes a video of herself rocking out in front of two yakubians bumping ugleez draped in the american flag

it's not like i'm out here saying hey hey let's not punch nazis. that's not what this song is about

i miss nyan cat

Artists that didn't (deservedly) make it on the top 77:

Frank Ocean, car Seat Headrest, Blood Orange, Bon Iver.

Artists that should've made it:

Noname, Maggie Rogers

eh i think maggie is gonna do ok without us

I'd not heard this Mitski song before. it's lovely.

ILM really needs to grow out of this 'aw no I am allergic to guitars!!' steez. and I don't just mean Tuomas. comparing this to Weezer or Wheatus or whatever is sloppy AF. it's like someone popping up after every rap tune and going 'oh no, not more of this Will Smith talking-over-the-music bollocks'

i would like to thank forks for not subbing in kidzbop covers for the tracks unavailable in spotify this year

Also lol @ ILM handwaving away sexist lyrics and then coming down hard on a woman for talking about how she feels marginalised.

Otm, thank god. This is exactly how I felt, but was too upset to put coherently.

Frederik, would you read it this way if she belonged to a different minority group? "Your mother wouldn't approve of how my mother raised me/But I do, I think I do" says almost the opposite of what you're suggesting it does: she IS different but she's beginning to recognize that she's NOT unique and alone, that there's a tradition behind why she's different, she's becoming OK with it, and she DOES belong even if she's not the best American girl in someone else's eyes.

― My Body's Made of Crushed Little Evening Stars (Sund4r), 27. januar 2017 00:32 (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that's kind of what I meant by hipster-patriotism.

Also, come on, this is Weezer. Check the BNM Pitchfork track review, it says Weezer too. And I love Weezer! But this is not as good as Weezer. Teenage Dirtbag, yeah ok, that's a slur, but it's a lot like Teenage Dirtbag. It just is. The chugging rhythm and the quiet-loud dynamic, and the ironic self-deprecating-but-not-really lyrics.

Oh, and big thanks to the poll runners from me as well!

really wasn't expecting I Can't Give Everything Away to be so high. it's a lot better than I remembered

i don't think the weezer comparison is too far off in Your Best American Girl (which i love), they have fairly similar melodic senses & do the loud/quiet/loud thing in a similar way. the chorus explosion is a bit more all encompassing in YBAG than anything weezer did though. some really bizarre takes on the lyrics here

Work seemed really slight at first but the hook is fantastic & there's the subtle build in tension/intensity. shame that only leads to Drake but not even he can ruin it

great list overall, thanks

I don't really know what hipster-patriotism is but I kind of doubt it means "Asian-Americans coming to terms with their identities" (and, if it does, I'm glad someone is bringing it to indie rock).

.....wtf are people still really not getting the racial dimension of the mitski video? sund4r otm

I understand Tuomas' objections to the casual sexism of "Black Beatles," but the sexism is diluted through these snotty brats' boasts about being on top and as big as Beatle Paul. They've never seemed particularly interested in women -- they prefer their own company and their bad falsettos and wack rhymes.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 26, 2017 5:19 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is actually a pretty common feature that's typically identified in hegemonic masculinity (not saying Rae Sremmurd can be totally hegemonic though, 'cos that also requires being white). Homosociality, being with (masculine) peers, is the preferred kind of social interaction, but even then tales of hetero conquests and dominance need to be constantly repeated because they're, A) sort of social currency, evidence that you're at the top of the pack, and, B) proof that you're not gay even though you associate mostly with other men ('cos hegemonic masculinity is fragile, despite its proponents’ claims it's not inborn or “natural”, so it needs to be constantly reinforced).

― Tuomas, Thursday, January 26, 2017 5:57 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you guys prefer the company of bad posts

Hi guys! Fun year, Black Beatles was in front from day 1 but everything else moved around as more votes came in.

- I never checked out Lemonade because Tidal but I should have voted for "Sorry"
- I love the Shura album but "What's it gonna be" is the worst song on it so -> conflicted emotions
- Melanie de Biasio was my #1, for once other people agreed with me :) For all the/my handwringing about auto-vote-splitting, nobody voted for it in the albums poll (iirc)

Don't Touch My Hair > Cranes In The Sky

― ornate orchestral arrangements (DJP), Thursday, January 26, 2017 8:33 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My main takeaways listening to some of the stuff I haven't heard here are: destroy all Europop, destroy all Eurodance, destroy Europe, leave Lisbon as a tiny floating island.

i need 77 lagoon hot-takes itt

and some flop-takes too

where are the lamp haven't-heard-takes

my main takeaway from this is i have the best taste

i need 77 lagoon hot-takes itt

― gr8080, Thursday, January 26, 2017 7:34 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like the presentation! its cool to be able to look at most of the the pictures and just go nah

lol

you guys prefer the company of bad posts

― lag∞n, Thursday, January 26, 2017

*shrugs* better than preferring the company of bad hair; I have measured out my hair in Aveda.

i listened to a playlist with thugger-chance-sremmurd on random stoned at the gym way too much this year, besides that the only other thing on the list i really jammed too a bunch is bad and boujee, tho there are def other song on there that i like

*shrugs* better than preferring the company of bad hair; I have measured out my hair in Aveda.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 26, 2017 7:54 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oop bad posts v bad hair

I'm also disappointed no Nao made it